Is Anyone On Fox News In A Position To Complain About Irresponsible Media Behavior In The Trayvon Martin Case?

You can barely turn on Fox News lately without hearing a pundit or a host complaining about a “rush to judgment” or “irresponsible” reporting. Yet, Fox is throwing stones from the very thin walls of its own glass house. This is the network that promoted Donald Trump’s birtherism in a big way and continues to promote Trump as acrediblepundit even after he was proved spectacularly wrong. It’s hard to think of anything more irresponsible for a news network than promoting a phony claim that our president is not American-born and not legally qualified to serve. But Trump is far from the only irresponsible pundit treated seriously on Fox News.

Exhibit A: Ann Coulter. Besides the fact that voter-fraudobsessed Fox doesn’t seem to care about the – not one, but two! – voter-fraud investigations Coulter has triggered with her very suspicious voting behavior, she has a long history of making irresponsible, inflammatory statements, many right there on Fox News. In fact, you might say, she’s made a career out of it. Just a few of her “greatest hits” include:

A recent suggestion that it’s “time” for conservatives to “go after the Obama children.”(3/21/12, Hannity)

“(Rahm Emanuel’s brother) is on my death list. Hold the applause. I’m going to be on the death panel.” (8/12/09, Hannity)

She agreed with and supported Andrew Breitbart calling Ted Kennedy a “piece of excrement” when he died because, “he was a piece of human excrement.”(3/12/12, Hannity)

Coulter is far from the only one. There’s Hannity’s pal, the slavery-loving, woman hating Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson who announced on the air that “Most blacks, not all but most in Tennessee, especially in the Memphis, Tennessee area, are… so racist.” (8/6/08 Hannity & Colmes)and “I think we all agree that Barack Obama was elected by, mostly by black racists and white guilty people.” (2/3/09 Hannity).

There’s also Liz Trotta who joked about assassinating President Obama and recently suggested that if women want to serve in the military they should expect to be raped and not make a big deal out of it. Trotta is still a Fox News contributor.

Despite all that, Bill O’Reilly and Bernard Goldberg teamed up last night to bitch about NBC’s doctored audio of the Trayvon Martin 911 call (as if Fox had never monkeyed with any ofitsvideo) and attack its bias. Sneering about Rev. Al Sharpton’s role in the Trayvon Martin case, O’Reilly said it would be like him having “some kind of political agenda.”

Or like having that same Ann Coulter appear on Fox that same night – without a word about her controversial history – to opine on who would be an appropriate vice presidential pick for Mitt Romney? Because that’s exactly what O’Reilly did last night, within minutes of the Goldberg bitch session. The two videos are below:

Showing 14 reactions

Ok, got myself a VERY rocky bout of sleep, looked intothe story… and it appears NBC has issued an apology, corrected the record, and is launching an internal investigation.

So yeah, they did it- break out the outrage.

When you’re done, think about this: They issued an apology, and are looking for who did it. How often have we seen either out of Fox News? The only sincere apology I’ve seen out of that network- ever- has been the one recently made by Geraldo to Trayvon’s parents.

I’ve also yet to see Fox News brass condemn this kind of behaviour from it’s employees. Where was the ethics investigation on O’Reilly when he was up for sexual harassment? Where was the Investigation into the Sammon memos? When Beck, Hannity and Coulter were all up for various forms of fraud, where was the outrage that their network hosts would do that?

Just this morning on F&F, the 3 stooges were more than pleased to report that NBC made a public apology for their editing of the 911 tape. In the first hour, Daddy Douchey pimped the upcoming segment about NBC by saying that “NBC admits editing a tape to make George Zimmerman sound like a racist. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened so when is sorry not enough?”

Clearly, the stooges don’t like it that NBC chose to edit the 911. So I assume they would be just as outraged that their own BOR dishonestly edited the same 911 to make Zimmerman look LESS racist, right? Yeah, riiiiight, in the F&F playbook it’s only the “librul” media who should be called out.

So where is the demand that BOR apologize for HIS editing? After all, when it comes to BOR and editing, “this isn’t the first time something like this has happened”. Just another example of FOX “news” double standards and F&F hypocrisy.

@Don D – LOL, good question considering how often FOX “news” has targeted them (and many political policies that would appear to help them) with criticism and, at times, hateful rhetoric.

Having said that though, I have noticed that FOX “news” is finally coming to realize a hard truth for them to swallow — just how important the Hispanic vote is going to be to the GOP candidates that they spend so much time pimping for. That’s why we’re hearing the FOX talking heads putting forth Mark Rubio and Susana Martinez as VP choices for Romney. I also have no doubt whatsoever that their wish to get a piece of the ever growing Hispanic population voting block is also behind their decision to start a FOX “news” Latino website.

The reality of the growing Hispanic population has put FOX “news” is a rather difficult position. Anyone remember this gem?

Under the false pretense that he didn’t want Hispanics to “carry the whole load”, former FOX TV host, John Gibson, "urged viewers to “[d]o your duty. Make more babies,” because he had found out, from a recently released report, that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. Gibson added: “You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic.” Gibson later repeated: “To put it bluntly, we need more babies.”

Kevin, as much as I’m disgusted with NBC, should Fox News not be lying about the editing (I’m using time off, so I only have my home resources to check ATM), you’re absolutely right that Fox News pretending they have the moral high ground in anything related to this case is laughable.

Take the “enhanced head wound” they been passing around of Zimmerman- putting aside that whoever made that apparently doesn’t know the first thing about head wounds, or how they’re treated (it’s not even the right type!), they made it something that, if real, would have shown up on the original video.

People zoomed in on it, played with the colour, played with the contrast- the RW blogger who first reported it for The Daily Caller just happened to be the only one who found the right editing. And won’t tell anyone how to re-create it. Fancy that.

Naturally, Fox News doesn’t care- it supports their side, so it’s admissable in their court.

I find it interesting that this is the same network that has repeatedly rushed to judgment on any issue where it can take a partisan stand against either Democrats or left-leaners, or both.

Even sillier is the attack on NBC for the editing of the 911 recording of George Zimmerman. I agree that an NBC employee editing this material was unprofessional and inflammatory, and should be properly dealt with. However, if Fox wants to go down this road, I’m delighted. It means that they are ready to openly condemn the works of Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, whose deceptively edited material have caused a tremendous amount of confusion and misery.

Robert Urban, yeah, Fox got the Duke case right in that the guys were innocent and the prosecutor misbehaved but Fox was rushing to judgment on their behalf from the get go. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that the accuser was black.

Kelstar, Much as I hate to defend Hannity, he agreed with the Casey Anthony verdict of not guilty. He was actually pretty eloquent about it. I posted about it. I’m not sure but I think O’Reilly accepted it, too, maybe not happily.

Rocky. I can’t believe I am doing this but, yeah, Fox finally got one thing right with the Duke case. If you try often enough you have to eventually get something right. Eventually the law of odds fall in your favor. And, shit, I myself have a BIG problem with the Rev. Al in the Tawanna B. case. I will never forget how he blamed innocent law enforcement officials BY NAME, impeded the investigation, and NEVER apologized for it. So there you have it. But I don’t, and never will use Sharpton as a source for anything I post. Just as I will take everything Fox has to say with the same grain of salt.

Liberals wanted Terri Schiavo dead because she wasn’t a gangbanger like Tookie, copkiller like Mumia, or terrorist like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And Ward Churchill (who famously said that America deserved 9/11) is a proven phony Indian and plagarist.

And if people were so concerned about media behavior, they should explain the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, the lack of coverage of the murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, or their continued defense of the Reverend of Nothing Al Dimwit and his refusal to apologize for the Tawana Brawley rape hoax.

Fox itself has kept this story going by insisting from the beginning that this killing was not about race. They certainly jumped to that conclusion with ease. I find their position bizarre. Why do they care so much whether it was about race? They seem to have a lot invested in the idea that only white Christian people are victims and everyone else is being ‘politically correct’ or politicizing a story when they claim victimhood.